Report: Apple Will Introduce Full-Screen Video iAds To Apps In 2014

Sometime this year, iAds will reportedly get a lot bigger and more annoying. According to AdAge, Apple will roll out new ads in apps that automatically play on the full screen of an iPhone or iPad.

Currently, a user needs to click a smaller banner ad from an advertiser for a video to play:

The people described these new video ads as “interstitials,” suggesting that they’ll interrupt whatever someone is doing in app. More likely the ads will play at moments of transition, like after completing a game’s level or finishing an article.

It’s not clear how Apple plans to sell the video iAds or at what price. One person said Apple may sell the units through its ad exchange that quietly rolled out “a couple weeks ago.” Adweek had reported in December that Apple was looking to launch an ad exchange. Details of the exchange are scarce, but auctioned-off ads are typically less lucrative than ones pitched by a direct sales team.

Originally launched in 2010, advertisers were once required to buy in for more than $1 million. But that number quickly took a nose dive to less than $100,000 per campaign, even after Apple has added other features to the product.

In 2011, our own Bryan M. Wolfe even called iAds Apple’s “first egg of the millennium.”